'Someone just told me they'd dropped an E,' joked novelist Patrick Neate, introducing his literary nightclub, Book Slam. The monthly event, a mix of readings, poetry, DJs and live bands, usually held at west London club Cherry Jam, has attracted the likes of Nick Hornby and Toby Litt in the past.

Last week, due to the pairing of American authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Dave Eggers, the night moved to the plush Great Eastern Hotel on Liverpool Street. A smattering of the hiperati - Hari Kunzru, ICA chairman Ekow Eshun - mingled with a cool crowd in an environment (marbled atrium, thick carpets, black-clad staff) at odds with the cutting edge nature of the readers.

But once Foer had bounded on to read from his new novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in his witty, Woody Allen-like manner, the swanky atmosphere really didn't matter. The main event though, judging by the cheers, was Dave Eggers, the literary dynamo of McSweeney's, who launched into a series of letters sent to US CEOs from a man pretending to be a dog.

He followed up with a modern fable about the American Nightmare and a rambling tale of how he'd been waylaid by the State Department after he'd left one of his notebooks on an aeroplane. The night was about storytelling, Neate had said, and in Foer and Eggars he'd found two American masters.